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Snortable Drug 'Replaces' Sleep For Monkeys In Trials
sporkme writes "A DARPA-funded research project at UCLA has wrapped up a set of animal trials testing the effects of inhalation of the brain chemical orexin A, a deficiency of which is a characteristic of narcolepsy. Monkeys were deprived of sleep, and then given a shot of the compound. 'The study ... found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is 'specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness' without other impacts on the brain.' Researchers seem cautious to bill the treatment as a replacement for sleep, as it is not clear that adjusting brain chemistry could have the same physical benefits of real sleep in the long run. The drug is aimed at replacing amphetamines used by drowsy long-haul military pilots, but there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."
Years ago I was asked to join a group doing government work in exploring drugs related to sleep replacement or to maintain alertness in certain groups of people. This sort of stuff made me uncomfortable then and it still gives me the creeps.
The question for me always is whether or not the drug can *replace* sleep and all of its critical physiological functions. Sleep is a complex phenomenon with very specific architectures that helps maintain learning, performance, sanity and literature suggests more far reaching benefits from regular sleep. Lots of drugs can make the brain look "awake" including amphetamines and modafinil, itself widely used by people to maintain activities in the face of sleep needs. However, there are long term biological implications for not allowing one to invoke sleep including poor long term performance on learning and memory and there is some literature that suggests cardiovascular implications as well as other problems. Now, while the adverse effects of amphetamines are well known, they have been used for at least 60 years. On the other hand, drugs like modafinil are very recent and you may be shocked to find out just how many physicians, pilots, military personnel, truck drivers and housewives are currently taking modafinil to maintain alertness in the face of lack of sleep.
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A 2 am post about a drug to replace sleep, now isn't that ironic!
Exactly. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not after you...
You know who else don't need sleep?
Zombies.
Without having performed any research at all, I'm going to speculate that actual sleep is very important. In the wild it is dangerous to be unconscious for hours at a time. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, then nature would have found a way to avoid it. Or, more correctly stated, not needing sleep would seem to be a pretty amazing advantage.
But, almost anything with measurable cognitive abilities needs sleep. So there must be some very important work going on there. Probably laying down neural hardlines where temporary chemicals were making pathways before? I'm just guessing, but it's got to be something that requires a partial shutdown.
I think the technology is cool and would be useful for some things, though. I'm always in favor of exploring the outer limits of our abilities. It will be very interesting to see what happens if a person uses this chemical sleep exclusively for, say weeks at a time. Maybe we'll learn what sleep is really for by seeing what stops working correctly. My guess is that they'll not be able to recall anything beyond the past couple days. Things that happened too far back in their wakefulness will not get layed down as long term memories and will be permanently lost.
That is, it'll be kind of like Memento except with, say, a 72 hour working memory instead of 10 minutes.
...Sysadmins have recently discovered they can improve uptime by eliminating routine maintenance.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The amphetamines used by pilots are very slow-acting (by amphetamine standards) so they don't produce quite as much of the "jittery high" that is usually associated with their more common forms. 8+ hours later when the amphetamine pill finally wears off and the pilot is capable of sleeping again he will, if by no other means than running out of fuel, have ended the mission and found a safer place to catch up on the missed sleep. Potent stimulants have been used by combat troops since WWII so various world militaries have presumably become the reigning experts by now on their effects when used in extreme moderation.
The aforementioned controls notwithstanding, I'd much rather have pilots with nukes alert at the end of a 20-hr flight than dozing off. I'll put this into context for my fellow geeks: If you've ever been sleep-deprived at a LAN Party I'm sure you realize how much microsleep can throw off your aim and timing. Now double that no-sleep time, add in stress from the real threat of being shot down, and replace your mouse with the targeting mechanism for a 10-ton precision bomb that really shouldn't end up in the preschool next door (collateral damage?) ;)
Long-haul truckers, on the other hand, have a jittery high from the no-doze and a pretty debilitating crash on its way long before the end of their route. That being said, I like to make the generalization that awake people are universally safer than sleeping people when it comes to controlling large masses of fast-moving metal and even more so when you add combustible/hazardous materials.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Well sleepless people would consume more (probably 6 meals a day) and would have more leisure time as well. This require more work/money. The important statistic is the ratio between time spent at work and time spent having fun.
Also, even if it shorten the lifespan of individuals when counted in days of life, it would be interesting to see if it extends it when counted in "awaken hours".
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Here are some facts about orexin to supplement the article. It's a neuropeptide that is endogenous in the mamallian brain (probably outside of mammals, but I've never checked). It was discovered about 10 years ago, and the original biological function described for it was increasing feeding, hence the name orexin (although many scientists prefer the name hypocretin). It's also been shown to subserve the reward system in the brain as a modulating agent.
All which leads me to the question, how could this effect eating disorders and addiction? It's been shown that blocking the orexin system decreases relapse to drugs in animal models. Could artificially increasing the levels of orexin in the brain support the development or maintenance of drug abuse? Could it have similar effects on eating? It is interesting (and makes sense) that it only affected drowsy monkeys, as orexin seems to support the maintenance of wakefulness, so it's possible that there's a ceiling effect to orexin. Still, I'd be wary of longterm exposure to non-natural levels.
Sorry, but I'm a drug/organic chem geek.
The amphetamine in the "Go Pills" used by the USAF is dextro-amphetamine. This is NOT a derivative of methamphetamine. They are both derivatives of phenethylamine, and belong to that class of drugs. Amphetamine is an acronym of Alpha-Methyl-PHenEThylAMINE (ie: it's a phenethylamine molecule with a methyl group attached at the alpha position). Amphetamine is chiral, meaning that it has a stereocenter: because the molecule exists in 3D space there are two "versions" of it (called "isomers") that have the same atomic makeup, but are turned in different directions, and are thus non-superimposable. Dextroamphetamine is the dextrorotary isomer of regular ol' amphetamine. (The other isomer is called levo-amphetamine.)
This is NOT even remotely the same thing as methamphetamine. Do you know anyone on Adderall for ADHD? They are on dexamphetamine. Adderall is a mixture of both isomers of the amphetamine molecule (called a "racemic mixture"). Remember that seemingly minor changes in structure can cause a drug to have vastly different effects. The fact that the amphetamines are stimulants is something of an anomaly, since they're part of the larger class of Phenethylamines, and most PEAs are actually psychedelics (including drugs like MDMA, mescaline, MDMCat, MDA, and the 2C and DOx classes of "research" psychedelics).
I just want to counter any assumption people might take from this post that Air Force pilots are flying around jacked up to the gills on meth, fiending for a hit from the pipe, and screaming about the spiders crawling underneath their skin. Methamphetamine is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of the amphetamine family; similar to how heroin (diacetylmorphine) is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of morphine or fentanyl (80 times stronger than morphine, and not uncommonly used in epidurals during childbirth). As the parent suggests, there isn't anything dangerous in an expertly trained pilot taking dexamphetamine at a reasonable dose under medical supervision. If there is, there are thousands of college students out there popping Adderall illegally to study for exams because it intensifies concentration who would probably like to know about it! Methamphetamine, however, as I'm sure you've all seen on the news, is an entirely different animal...
This isn't so much a reply to the parent as a clarification of a lot of the "USAF pilots are taking meth!" posts I've seen in this thread. It's just not the same thing.
--Obyron